Gary Elwood
Author Archives: Gary Elwood
Gary Elwood
This Blog Is Ranked Top 50 Best Real Estate Marketing Blogs
Thanks to the people over at International Listings for creating a list of the top 50 real estate marketing bloggers.
We ranked number 46…
Just before Renderings, a blog by a real estate marketing agency and just after RSS Piece, a firm that builds SEO enhanced web sites for real estate agents.
Granted, International Listings didn’t number based upon a ranking system. What they did very nicely was put each blog in a category and then list the bloggers alphabetically.
Very nice indeed.
Thank you very much for the love, International Listings!
10 Core Emotions So People Understand Your Message at the Gut Level
Last Friday, while I was brainstorming over a marketing message with some other writers, I shared with them a technique I use whenever I’m trying to understand the psyche/heart of a prospect/partner/client…and what will get them to respond positvely to my message.
I filter everything about the person through ten core emotions to see which emotion or combination of emotions will best help a person understand a message.
This is something I learned from the American Writers and Artists Institute (AWAI), where I completed both their Accelerated Copywriting Program and Master’s Program.
Here, according to AWAI, is a list of the ten most powerful and common core buying emotions:
1. Curiosity. For some reason, we just can’t stand to turn aside from new, fascinating information. This is why the “news” industry is a multi-billion-dollar business.
2. Vanity. Most people have a strong, almost uncontrollable, desire to be better than everyone else in some way – physically, socially, mentally, spiritually, etc. And not just to be better, but to make sure everyone knows it.
3. Fear. Decades before I was concerned about things that really pose a threat to health and security, I worried about what was hiding in the pitch-black abyss under my bed. Fear makes us feel that danger is imminent, and we will do almost anything to avoid it.
4. Benevolence. The negative emotion of fear is countered by a drive for the positive emotion of happiness, even euphoria. And the quickest way to achieve that feeling is by doing good for someone else.
5. Insecurity. Are you good enough to be a top-notch wage earner? Parent? Lover? Are you good enough to live in the prestigious neighborhoods? I bet you’ve wondered. (We all have.)
6. Power. Think politicians, here. Corporate CEOs. Generals. Dictators. The Brain. Wave the fact the fact they’ll be the top dog, control large masses of people, conquer their enemies… and they’ll eat out of your hands.
7. Wealth and Abundance. This applies to everyone on the planet: the desire to have the jet set life, luxury and leisure…the boat, the house on the beach, the friends in Paris.
8. Security. Life insurance ads do this really well. Or Onstar. It’s rooted in fear, because when this hits a person in the gut, it is usually from fear that something bad will happen to them or their loved ones.
9. Belonging. This one is huge. In every single person God has planted a need to connect with other humans. That’s why the family is foundational to God’s plan. Show someone how they can be part of something important or exclusive gives them a good incentive to do what you ask.
10. Guilt. Not to many appeals come straight out and condemn you. What happens usually in a guilt appeal is you are allowed to connect the dots. And when you do this, there’s that quite ache in your soul that says, “If I turn my back, Fluffy the ferret is going to die!”
You’ve probably recognized that a lot of these emotions overlap. Some are stronger than others. The point is to understand your prospect so well, that you know which emotion—or combination of emotions—will appeal to him or her.
And by understanding these and other core buying emotions, you command the power to help other people understand your message at a “gut” level.
They won’t just read or listen to it—they’ll feel it.
Web 2.0 in Plain English | 4 Short Videos
Still don’t have a clue what Web 2.0 is all about?
Or perhaps you want to demonstrate to your broker or spouse [whoever holds the purse stings] in a simple, shoot-from-the-hip way what Web 2.0 is…but don’t have the time to create such a demonstration. Or even know how to go about doing it.
If that’s you, then watch and then share these four short videos.
The Word That Can Destroy Your Marketing
There’s a word with so much destructive power that you should never, never, use it when talking about or evaluating a marketing effort.
I know you’ll find it hard to believe a word could have such appalling magic. But it’s true. I’ve seen this word works its evil more times than I care to think about.
A Short History on the Friction between Email and Design
If you use HTML in email, then this is a must read post.
You need to discover if you are using HTML in email wrong and then you need to learn how to use HTML in email right.
And trust me, you could be using it wrong because there are a lot of people using HTML in emails wrong, including big name corporations who you’d think would know better.
The following chronology occurred middle of this year. You’ll enjoy the banter, the back and forth bickering between these two web designers, that will make this HTML email lesson not only informative, but fun.
Read on.
June 8, 2007: My favorite potty-mouthed* rant on email versus design: email is not a platform for design.
June 12, 2007: Campaign Monitor’s response to Zeldman’s potty-mouthed rant + 5 steps to better html emails.
June 12, 2007: Jeffrey Zeldman responded to Campaign Monitor’s response over his potty-mouthed rant with a well thought out and much more modest post, Eight points for better e-mail relationships.
June 14: Zeldman lingers on the subject: Nokia is trying to cram a bad web page—the kind of web page that is all graphics and almost no textual content—into a container that can’t hold it.
July 5, 2007: Despite my desire for all text, I confess I am a sucker for this: showcase of elegant email designs that work. The reason they work: design frames the language…not the other way around.
Dig This from the Dustbin: October 2005: Designing Emails For the Preview Pane and Disabled Images
* Zeldman says “sucks” a lot, which my six-year old daughter says is a bad word.
The 3 Commandments of Online Marketing You Must Obey
For whatever perverse drive, desire or demon, this morning I worked through Hugh McLeod’s Global Micro Brands archive, Brian Clark’s post on Are You Someone’s User-Generated Content? and in the the same hour, I also read through randfish’s visual tour of the basics of social media marketing, twice.
Something was telling me I was gunning for a connection, searching for concepts to connect to bring this blog post to you.
That’s my convoluted way of saying this was divinely inspired. And that means you must pay attention.
The Moses of Marketing is about to speak. :0
1. You’ll Never Escape the Relationship
What stuck out to me most thoroughly in my research this morning–especially when I scrolled through the Power Point Presentation of social media marketing, which made made a very visual impression on me–was that social media marketing hinges on relationship.
It’s not about the blog, LinkedIn, Twitter or You Tube.
It’s about the relationship. It’s about the fundamental ways you make people follow you. It’s about building that cult. Those junkies.
They like you, and that is the fundamental reason they want to work with you. Joe Girard will tell you that.
But you don’t want to stop there.
2. You Must Build Your Personal Brand
Thing to keep in mind is this: there are lots of opportunities out there to market, whether on a micro scale or a macro scale.
Yet, you have to build your real estate marketing plan first. And your client has to be the cornerstone of that plan. But don’t forget about who you are.
What I mean by that is this: some pundits will say branding is dead or a waste of money. Now, branding for branding sakes is a waste of money.
I agree.
But there is a growing body of research that proves that branding will improve any marketing effort you put forth.
Think about the blogs that you follow most. What is it about them that you hang on them the most?
Definitely the writing, the wit, the humor, the information. But don’t forget about the clean design, the clever logo, the glamorous photo.
Moreover, this branding or presentation appeal exists in the living, breathing type, too.
You’re signature scarf, lavender zoot suit [had to throw that in there] or your charity work for Habitat for Humanity.
The point is you are separating yourself from everyone else, including your company.
Which brings me to my next point, the third commandment….
3. You Must Create Original Digital Content on Your Brand
One point about social media is that so few people are adding valuable content.
Most people linger half-heartedly on any social network at best. [With your striking brand and drop-em dead blog, you are ahead of the curve.]
I think part of people’s problems is the massive opportunity of new technologies flooding us. I stopped caring about the newest apps when I stumbled across a list of the 1,000 best Web 2.0 tools.
It’s like a plague.
And people abandon one thing for the next, helter skelter, void of a plan. The thing to remember about a blog is this:
People who abandon blogging [or neglect it] have gone from developing a digital asset of their own that could have real value, to becoming someone else’s user-generated content.
Blogs like Freelance Switch and Zen Habits have grown big fast because readers tend to value the independent publication approach…
Valuable content on a site you own is a classic win-win for readers and the site owner, while publishing on Facebook is a lopsided relationship that favors Zuckerberg and his data-hoarding cronies. [via]
The same is true with Active Rain.
You must remember this. What is bigger than your blog is your personal brand. Who you are. You are lost on Active Rain, Facebook, because that is not your content. Try and ask them to migrate your content to another independent blog platform.
But also remember that you are bigger than the company you work for. As Hugh McLeod says:
The grand-daddy of this space is probably Robert Scoble, who may work full-time for Microsoft, but whose brand is much, much larger than any job description they could give him; that’s worth far more than anything they’re ever likely to pay him.
Don’t let your company branding swallow you alive. There are certain protocols you have to follow. But you are smart. You’ll figure ways around it.
Very few people outside the blogosphere know what the hell he’s talking about. What I’m talking about. What Greg Swann is talking about.
They’re just now figuring out online stealth marketing, IE4, MySpace.
But perhaps the proliferation of users going online via mobiles will change all that.
Conclusion: Your Biggest Motivation for Obeying These Commandments
In a nutshell, you got three commandments you must obey:
1. Seek the relationship. That is the prize.
2. Become a valuable person by building your brand.
That means you simply must work on identifying what you can do better than anyone else in the entire world…and do that one thing the best. [Even if it means being a literary curmudgeon.]
3. Protect your individuality.
Now, perhaps your biggest motivator for obeying these commandments comes from Seth Godin soapboxing on monopolies:
The defectors know something you don’t. The defectors know that if they hurry, they can build a new monopoly, a monopoly you don’t control. They know that they can build a direct and long-term relationship with the end user, one that will survive competitive incursions and will last a long time. if they hurry.
And so, learn from these folks. you should hurry. You must hurry.
The Cult of the Real Estate Agent
Perhaps you could follow this Trappist command: thou shalt not buy too much of our beer.
As Ben McConnell states, “Besides being what people describe as an excellent beer, Westvleteren has developed into a cult brand based on its rituals.”
Some of those rituals include:
- You must make an appointment to buy the beer
- You have to call the Beer Phone to make that appointment
- The monks, from an order of silent monks, may talk on the Beer Phone only
- You may buy only two cases at a time
- The beer is sold only once per month
- They only make 120,000 bottles per year
- Tales abound of people driving 16 hours across your Europe to get their monthly supply
- And the monks truly believe that sell beer to live and not “live to sell beer”
The key to creating this kind of cult is essentially being religiously devoted to your craft.
The Horror of Scarcity, the Pain of Exclusivity
Those who brew Westvleteren are serious about their business, “their craft”, but they aren’t trying to maximize results, track eyeballs, post records…
What they’ve done is created a cult: They’ve developed a need for their product that is borderline addiction.
A short supply sends people into horror-stricken panic. Think scarcity. Like the Great Depression type run on banks when everyone thought money was going to be scare.
Or it creates a sort of exclusivity…that it is a prize to have this product.
On an update to his original post, McConnell, an Austin resident, shares the fact that the only way he could get his hands on one of the beers was through a beer connoisseur’s collection.
How about that for being shut out?
The Cult That Spreads Without Help
Another creation of a cult occurred when Hugh McLeod created a the Blue Monster sticker campaign for a winery.
The blue stickers, which read “Microsoft change the world or go home” where a hit and people clamored for the stickers. In the small print on the sticker was a pitch to buy wine and a web address.
He also encouraged bloggers to request free bottles of wine if they blogged about it. They did. Happily.
That is cult via viral.
The Largest Cult in the Smallest Market
There is another kind of cult: the cult of community. Think Star Trek fans. Or medieval Renaissance week enders. Or Green Bay Packer fans.
The Green Bay Packers thrive in the smallest media market to be home of a major professional sports league.
Why is that?
It has a lot to do with legendary history.
The Green Bay Packers won five league championships in seven years and then went on to win the first two Super Bowls. In fact, the Super Bowl trophy was renamed the Vince Lombardi Trophy in 1970 in recognition of these awesome accomplishments.
And tons of lore:
Because Curly Lambeau’s employer, the Indian Packing Company, paid for the team’s first uniforms when they played their first game, they were called the Packers. Initially, due to Lambeau’s affinity to the University of Notre Dame, the Packers’ team colors were blue and yellow. When it was time for a change in 1959, new head coach Vince Lombardi introduced the current green and gold we have all come to know and love. Just two years after the new colors, the oval G was created by Green Bay Packers equipment manager Dad Braisher. [via]
The other towering figure head of the Green Bay Packers is Brett Farve: “The Green Bay Packers have been spoiled to have their quarterback, Brett Favre not miss a start in well over a decade – a record no one has ever come close to touching.”
A Profile of a Real Estate Cult
The thing to remember about creating a cult is that it is slightly religious. A better way of saying it is that it is ritualistic, or rich in ceremony or practice.
As an agent this could mean several things. Let me create a profile to give you an example:
- If you have significant or unusual history, share it. Create that story of your early days as an agent, the history, the lore.
- If you are successful, or if you can manage it, work only six months out of the year. When you come back from your six month hiatus, your waiting list will be the length of your arm.
- If you are charismatic, flaunt it. Use it to make people happy, fulfilled. Use it to entertain or perform on a high level. Cults are built around highly influential people. If you are not an irresistible person, get started on becoming one.
- If you can arrange it, perform certain functions of buying or selling homes differently. Instead of a closing at the title company as usual, see if you can’t do it at an old historic home, maybe even in the old historic court house. Think ceremony and different.
Finally, if you want to be the best, create the purple cow…
What you deliver should be something people instantly recognize, without being told, as something that’s extraordinary and almost impossible to imitate.
Think the iPod. Or the Wii. Or the Four Seasons Hotel George Paris.
Stunningly Easy, 25 Minute and 25 second Routine for Finding Buyer Clients
An African bull elephant weighs 12,000 pounds. Stands 11 feet high. Flaunts tusks 6 to 8 feet long. Eats 770 pounds of grass, leaves, roots, bark, branches, fruit and water plants.
A day.
Now, imagine eating that sucker. It would take forever, wouldn’t it? So one bite at a time, right?
Well, that’s the take away for today’s post. If you are in a market with a hefty level of inventory, then finding buyer’s is on top of your list.
But consumer confidence is gloomy . This means people are holding on to their money, saving, perhaps looking for discounts. What you have to do is figure out how to approach them with an enticing offer. Something that will get them off the fence.
It could be a discount or bargain . It could be a one day only sale .
Whatever it is you are offering, once you have that out of the way, use a simple, 25-minute and twenty-five-seconds-a-day tactic to find those hot leads…in a fraction of the time it usually takes.
How do you do that? Easy.
1. Choose the time of day you are at your peak. Whether morning or afternoon.
2. Block out 30 minutes each day at this time.
3. Use a timer: set it at 25 minutes and 25 seconds.
4. Then pick up the phone and return phone calls from leads you received that day.
5. Don’t do anything for that 25 minutes and 25 seconds. Except call.
Once you’re done, pat yourself on your back. And use the remaining 4 minutes to plan how you are going to spend all the money you’re going to make. Make sure you do it again the next day.
I like this method because it’s a great time management principle: time block AND lump tasks. The most important thing to do here is make sure you do nothing else but pick up the phone and dial. It’s unbelievable how much time people waste dilly-dallying simply because they don’t put boundaries on a task .
And get this: once the market is on the upswing, you can switch this tactic around to build a house list. Call friends and families, ask them for permission to call people they know who might have housing needs, focus your time, get to work and don’t look back.
The 4 Best Agent Inner Circle Articles
For the last year I’ve been following what I think are the best offline marketing articles written for real estate marketing by Senior Editor Craig Forte of Agent Inner Circle.
Craig is a master copy writer, a brilliant mentor, and reading these articles for pure study of copywriting persuasion alone will be worth it.
But there is so much more there for you…offline real estate marketing wise.
I recognize you are time starved, content-overloaded, so what I did yesterday was sit down and go through these articles in the last year and see which four I thought were must reads.
What follows are the ones I chose.
Of course Craig’s got other articles at Agent Inner Circle. Even articles by guest writers. You would not go wrong spending an afternoon sifting through the content.
It’s like an MBA course in real estate marketing online. But it’s free.
[Okay, not entirely free: You do have to hand over your name and email address to access the archives. But it’s worth it.]Enjoy.
The Three “M’s” of Marketing Success
Have you ever spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours on an ad or mailing program, only to stare at your silent phone or pager?
If so, you’re not alone. Most agents spend an enormous amount of time learning about “real estate”, but very little learning about the “elements” that turn your advertising (or any marketing or prospecting efforts) from a “sunk cost” to a true “money-maker”.
The truth about real estate success is this: Even the most competent and knowledgeable agent will go broke without a steady, consistent stream of qualified, motivated buyers and sellers.
So while knowledge about real estate is essential to being a competent agent, it’s not going to write your ticket to success. You also need to develop prospecting and marketing skills designed to create an on-going flow of leads and clients.
Money-making marketing isn’t difficult if you know a few basics. In fact, all successful marketing has three essential components. I call them…
An Investment That Pays for a Lifetime
Would you like a small piece of helpful investment advice? OK… look at these facts:
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of Revlon stock 10 years ago, it would now be worth $4
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of Harken Energy stock ten years ago, it would now be worth $2.
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of United Airlines stock ten years ago, it would now be worth $0.
But think about this…
- If you had bought $1,000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, and turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you would have $214.
Isn’t it amazing that your investment advisor could have advocated drinking and recycling, rather than investing in their worthless stocks, and you’d be 5 to 43 TIMES RICHER?
This does not go in the direction that you think it does. It is well worth the seventeen minutes [if you are a fast reader like me] it takes to read it. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying if you read only one of these articles, read this one: what it teaches impacts everything you do. It puts the horse before the cart.
A Grand Slam Buyer Prospecting System
If you’re looking to generate a consistent daily flow of targeted, red-hot buyers calling you, this quick and easy strategy will have your phone ringing off the hook almost overnight.
You don’t need to make a single outbound call or prospect in any way. It will take you just minutes to set up. And (best of all) you can do it all on a “poor-boy” budget.
In fact, I know agents who have added more than $6-figures a year in commissions with this one system alone.
How to Master the Single Greatest Skill for Real Estate Success
Have you ever heard the saying, “If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention”?
Well, there’s an “outrage” being committed by well-intended (but misguided) “experts” in our industry…and it’s sending unsuspecting agents down a freeway to frustration and failure.
How to Bury a Real Estate Agent Alive
Have you ever been buried alive?
According to illusionist David Blane who spent 7 days buried alive, it’s not the near suffocation or loneliness or claustrophobia that grinds away at you…
It’s the feeling of being alive and TRAPPED that nearly kills you.
In the 18th and 19th Centuries, people were so afraid of being buried alive that they often requested to have their feet sliced or prodded with a fire poker to make sure that they were dead.
They did not want to be trapped.
We have a fear of being buried prematurely. Whether it is real or metaphorical. Nobody likes being trapped.
What does this have to do with real estate? Pay attention. I’ll show you.
The Ancient Bazaar
There’s good reason to believe that the real estate model is changing. [In fact, it already has: you just may not be aware of it.]
Nah, you say. The NAR is a huge organization that will not allow the model to change. At least not dramatically.
Is that right?
Let’s look at other supposed entrenched models that have changed and then tell me how you really feel.
Consider the Internet.
In the Cluetrain Manifesto, Christopher Locke wrote, “In many ways, the Internet more resembles an ancient bazaar than it fits the business models companies try to impose upon it.”
The Internet is a place where people can talk to other people without constraint. Without filters or censorship or official sanction. And perhaps most significantly, without advertising.
That was true in the beginning. But not now.
Manipulation, Coercion, Threats of Reprisal
The web has become just an extension of preceding mass media, primarily television. According to Locke, the rhetoric it uses is freighted with the same marketing jargon that characterized broadcast: brand, market share, eyeballs, demographics.
Of course, online marketeers still drool at the prospect of the Net replicating the top-down broadcast model wherein glitzy “content” is developed at great cost in remote studios and jammed down a one-way pipe into millions of living rooms.
It’s like TV with a buy button.
Yippee!
But business environments based on command-and-control are usually characterized by manipulation, coercion, and threats of reprisal.
And this means nothing to the web surfer. He’ll ignore you because he’s got plenty to keep him busy.
Funny thing is, not a whole lot of agents even know what the Internet is for, let alone blogging. Regardless, we’ve adopted it faster than any technology since fire.
And you need to catch up.
How to Bury a Real Estate Agent Alive
For one, it’s given the consumer way more choice and power than anyone imagined. It’s turned the tables upside down.
Many brokers and agents feared these changes, seeing in them only a devastating loss of control.
Those who didn’t adapt got buried alive.
Darwin said “It’s not the strongest or the fittest that survive–rather it’s the species that most adapts survives.”
Are you willing to adapt?
In the old school, you get this rule-book mindset–the broker’s s common look and feel, logo placement, legal number of words on each Web page, calls per day, work your family list, post a billboard here, churn out endless reams of cash here [pay per click].
These may have worked in the past, when the web was young, when the 80’s were a stellar set of years, but it’s all so cramped and constipated and uninviting now.
Dead.
The real point is that the Internet has made it possible for genuine human voices to be heard again.
The fact is, people at the bazaar, the consumers on the web, often have far more valuable knowledge than brokers and agents and business control freaks. They are driving the car now.
The Challenge Facing 21st Century Agents
So you get yourself a website. Fling up a pic, a logo, a slogan: “Outstanding agent in the Metro City Area who stands up for quality and fairness.”
Somebody, please, slice the feet to see if they’re alive.
What you don’t want with your website is to kill off people. If you kill off this enthusiasm, you can easily end up with a large, professional-looking, and very expensive website or blog that nobody gives a damn about.
In contrast, genuine conversation flourishes only in an atmosphere of free and open exchange. What if, instead, the attraction is a throwback to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales?
When people are encouraged to share what they know with each other, when agents are ready to learn from the consumer what their wants and needs are…then this exchange becomes a rapidly expanding conversation–a conversation that would soon lead to loyal clients.
The challenge I’ve found agents to have is not to offer just trivial feature alternatives, but transparency.
In a networked market, the best way for an agent to “advertise” will be to provide a public window into his or her heart.
Instead of putting up slick images of what they’d like people to believe, agents will open up so people can see what’s really going on.
Of course you’ll be sticking your neck out.
But if you don’t, you risk premature death. You can’t invite customers to contribute buying and selling ideas by holding them at bay.
Or worse: failing to meet them where they are congregating.
Why They’ll Make Fun of You
To some, it’s spooky to think going online invites criticism.
Mouthing platitudes guarantees you will be challenged. Nothing is accepted at face value, or taken for granted. Everything is subject to inspection–whether it was a market condition, a working philosophy or, God help you, an advertisement.
Think of Joel and the ‘bots on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The point is not to watch the film, but to outdo each other making fun of it.
But this whole gamut of conversation, from infinite jest to point-specific expertise: who needs it?
You need it.
Conversations are markets. And markets is where you make your money.
When conversations are not only engaging, interesting, exciting–they become effective. They become tools and techniques to bridge that chasm between their problems and your solution.
Do It Now
Conversations on the web does not reinforce loyalty and obedience–it encourages idle speculation and loose talk. It encourages stories.
So leverage a blog. Leverage LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Open Social, Active Rain, Zwillow.
Bare your soul. Tell a story. Create a cult. Do something out of the ordinary online. Otherwise this cooling market will bury you.
And bury you before you are ready.
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